


Imagine Being Loved By Me

by mattepinkallshades



Series: The Wait [1]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, Butch Katya, F/F, Field Trip, Mutual Pining, Unhhh “Drugs” episode look Trixie, the audacity of being ugly and sexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:27:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24155839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades
Summary: Their first kiss was five years ago. She thought it would be thirty years ago, back when they first started to teach together.
Relationships: Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Series: The Wait [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743193
Comments: 11
Kudos: 59





	Imagine Being Loved By Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/gifts).



> Hi all :) I’m reposting a few of my works because I want to, starting with this one for my love connyhascontrol. There is more to come on this one, because she deserves it.

_I'd be the dreadful need in the devotee  
That made him turn around_

_And I'd be the immediate forgiveness_  
_In Eurydice_

_Imagine being loved by me!_

_I won't deny I've got in my mind now all the things we'd do_

_So I'll try to talk refined for fear that you find out how I'm imaginin' you_

“She looks like ... okay those banged-up, dusty, moldy box off-brand vintage not-Barbie dolls from the 70s, like they’re called ‘Claire’ and nobody actually bought them at the time. Like they look like they’ll bite you, they’re that psychotic looking. That’s what she looks like! She’s such a bitch. I know, she’s a bitch.” Laughter finally consumes the impromptu stand up act.

  
Year after year, one especially acerbic senior dominates and Katya always hopes that when they grow up they’ll put it to good use, find better targets. This kid takes the shit cake this year.

  
Katya—beloved Miss Zamo, who they believe wants to hear how much they hate all the other teachers as though it bolsters their subtle worship of her—overhears it from the passenger seat of the airport shuttle, sends a quick text before looking back to be sure all students are wearing their seatbelts. Her glasses are always slipping off and these lenses are scratched, as well, so she takes a guess and turns to the front, waiting for a reply to her message.

  
They’re talking about Trixie, Mrs. Mattel. She’s their history teacher and also the widow of the school’s late, highly esteemed principal. She’s on another shuttle, or should be by now. The students on this one consider themselves the luckiest for getting the Zamo Bus while the rest of the senior class trip has to travel to the hotel with the cunts, fuckfaces, and whatever other monikers they’ll randomly assign the faculty over the next two days.

  
Katya couldn’t care less about what they think. Not anymore.

  
“Embolism? He died because she scared him so badly with that face and being such a bitch. That little clot was his terrified childhood running to hide and he dropped dead, bitch. Boom, motherfucker.”

  
Screeches and other high-pitched bird noises of laughter fill the vehicle to the roof and Katya feels them deep in her teeth. They’ve just been on a plane for an hour and a half and you’d think they’d been gagged for half the day.

  
“Guys, it’s too loud for the driver. The driver must concentrate. Keep the volume down,” she calls back with practiced, unequivocal certainty. They lower to a murmur and she can imagine the churning of their guts because they love to please her. She feels bad, but so be it. She is still their teacher, not their friend. Trixie will back her up if she tells her about it.

  
**T: Just left baggage claim so my group is already more spiteful than usual because of course only I checked a bag.**

**Femme phobia.**

**Can you hold up yours so mine isn’t last to dinner?**

  
Poor Trixie. She is ... she is ‘a bitch’. She always will be to them. Katya appreciates how she’s taken the femme title to heart, like it makes her make sense to herself.

  
**K: How unprofessional of you to ask. I am a learned scientist, I preserve order.**

**I’ll ask the driver to loop us around the mall, slow us down.**

  
She won’t get a thanks even though she’s sure she means to. Trixie is too frazzled right now. Katya can picture her heels wobbling against the curb, and the big bow in her hair getting caught when she stoops to enter the passenger seat. The students will scoff, roll eyes, tap away in their ‘Mattel Meat Grinder’ group chat. How stealth they think they are.  
Trixie snuck a photo of one of their screens while waiting at the gate and sent it to Katya, seated at the other end.

  
**K: Meat? Is that rumor you’re a man going around again? I love it**

  
**T: No, I think they’re plotting to capture and murder me this year. Senior prank.**

  
“Buckaroos, we’re gonna take a spin around the mall or some shit! Sir? Can you detour us so we can see the um ... you know this?” She makes a pole shape with her hands. “And the places with steps?” Cheerful laughs bubble in the back and one of the students calls out the names of the Washington DC landmarks for her. “Yeah, those,” she grins.

  
They may adore her but she’s well aware they’ve pegged her as a sexless, appearance-disinterested, and most heartbreaking to them of all, UGLY old dyke. The combo of her steadily merging torso, unstyled Supercuts short chop, and tendency to zip a too-long fleece vest over whatever curtain-inspired outfit she’s chosen for the day seems to give her AP science students some kind of reflux. The thick black glasses could look stylish in context, but they don’t because there is none.

All fine. She knows a few of them can’t wait to be her someday, and they’ll have to earn it just like she did.

  
—

  
These key cards always give her pause. The direction to insert them, how tightly and smoothly they’ll fit, the sound, the whole sensory experience is a big deal. Katya’s not new at using them, and it’s not for lack of technical skill. She simply doesn’t enjoy the mental preparations. By the time she works up the strength to key the door open, she’s forgotten to check if any students are around or threatening to exit. There’s no formal reason to hide. It’s that they’ve decided the school doesn’t deserve to know about them.

  
Trixie stands with her stocking feet flat on the carpeted floor by the mirror in front of the bed, looking at her phone and probably about to text Katya again. She’s already taken her feet out of her heels, a moment that Katya likes to share in each day when she rubs them for her.

  
It’s okay though because her entire ensemble is 30 degrees over the usual top. There’s the ballet slipper pink satin head to toe—on her actual head is a gigantic, gigantic pink bow—the matching pink lace cardigan (shawl? Is it a shawl?), the conveyor belt issued plastic pearl jewelry, and the palm-sized faceted pink heart right on her collarbone.

  
To be fair, all that only tells a post-it note’s worth about where her head is at.

“What took so long?” she asks quietly like they’re at home.

  
“Oh, you know. The kids ordered dessert and wanted to yammer on and on,” Katya says, throwing in an insincere whiff of disdain. She often enjoys being the favored teacher, though not always. It can be tiresome. Tonight it was fun.

  
“Wouldn’t know what that’s like, wouldn’t want to.” Trixie drops a loud pile of jewelry on the dresser but still looks encrusted. Her hair is very yellow with the slightest pinkish hue, some toner from having it done recently. It’s in shoulder-length finger waves down each side and pulled back plump yet rock-solid in the middle. She’s like a wedding topper, not hearty or expensive-looking at all. Everything looks like Katya could pull it apart with her fingers. She comes up to her side and tugs on the lace elbow.

  
“Hey, mama.” Trixie’s face is real when she turns to her. Katya slides her hands through her hair and around the back of her head, pulls her down.

  
Their first kiss was five years ago. She thought it would be thirty years ago, back when they first started to teach together. A near miss at a faculty holiday party told her so, even if it was hosted by Principal Mattel, clutching Trixie and dragging her around most of the night like he’d been told he couldn’t open her until Christmas. She looked fresher then, not different. Just as ornate. She’s rarely undecorated.

  
Anyway, at the end of the night, there was some confusion in the coatroom and Katya helped her sort it out. They laughed and ripped each other apart for how useless they were at finding people’s things and exhausted their colleagues’ patience. And then Trixie hoisted her off the floor once the coats were all gone and they nearly kissed, but her husband popped in through the window to pick up his package, take her home.

  
She was never just a package. Trixie has always been a teacher. And she was always faithful to him. He was fine to her, respectful and good. At least he never had strong interests that took her away often or required her feigned attention. He had the good sense to be boring. It really doesn’t matter anymore because finally, Katya has her. Now, she is her wife.

  
“You’re a little animal. And now you’re mine,” Trixie laughs airily. Her face is slightly shiny laying on the bed after Katya is finished with her. ‘Round 1,’ as Katya said after quickly bringing her off with her fingers. It’s their anniversary, what else are they going to do? They didn’t plan this field trip to coincide. She’s so easy to please, too, it’s like a sexy version of shooting fish in a barrel.

Katya washes up in the bathroom which she didn’t before, though she meant to after dinner and dessert. A bit of caramel stuck to one finger was nagging at her on the elevator ride up. She had to pee, too but forgot it all as soon as she saw Trixie.

“Remember our first time when I was like ‘oh I might take a while, don’t feel bad’ and you were like ‘boop’ and I lost the use of my legs?” Her voice through the bathroom door is cute. She doesn’t have to talk louder just because the door is closed. No one has ever had to ask Trixie to speak louder. She has a bullhorn in her throat.

  
“You talk kind of like a teenager when you aren’t around them,” Katya says when she walks back into the room. She stretches out next to her, both of them still fully dressed on the immaculately made bed. The cover is still tight over the sheets though there’s a makeup stain on the pillow from Trixie pulling it against her face when she came. Her magenta blush is still sharp, carved with a buzz saw, and her lipstick looks like it could be lifted at the corner and peeled off.

“You make me feel like a teenager. Except when I look down and see my hands.” Trixie fans her fingers and Katya laces them, kisses the back of her hand. It’s soft and moves easily over the bones underneath. She can kiss it and suck the skin between her lips, see a little ridge that takes a second to smooth when she pulls back. Elasticity is something they won’t feel in each other, ever.

  
“Do ... you wanna get it out?” Trixie looks puzzled. “Well if you’re in the mood. We should go ahead and get started. The strap, mama, hello?”

  
“I didn’t bring it. I thought you were!”

Katy blinks quickly to cover her disappointment.

“I could have sworn you said you would.” She knows beyond a shadow of a doubt because it was a logical decision. “Because you checked your bag? I had to take mine through security ... didn’t want to risk it?”

  
“Oh no—“  
“It’s okay!”

  
“I forgot. God, I think my mind is starting to go,” Trixie says, worrying her hand over her forehead.

“No no. You’ve always been a bimbo.”

  
“I was a lot better at the coats than you were.” It’s strange to have stories that go so deep when they had to wait so long. Katya squeezes and rocks her shoulders, kisses the heavily sprayed crest at the top of her head.

  
“You really didn’t pack it?” Katya asks mournfully. She now feels an absolute primal desire, not for sexual pleasure, but for stretching Trixie’s thighs apart and penetrating her, striking at some experience only Katya can conjure. Reminding her.

  
“Really. I’m so disappointed.”

“We’ll have a great time tonight no matter what. You’ve already enjoyed an amuse-bouche,” Katya reminds her, wiggling and grinning.

  
“You did. Amoos. My boosh.” She thinks she’s hilarious but Katya shakes her head. Refusing to laugh is one of Katya’s secrets. It makes Trixie stompy and horny.

  
“So,” Trixie continues once she’s sure she can’t make Katya acknowledge her pathetic pun, “I have a thought. I’ve had this thought before, and now the opportunity might be perfect.”

  
Trixie grinds a laugh then and waves air against her cheeks, looks to Katya again. She puts a hand out and hovers it over Katya’s arm where her sleeves are scrunched up to her elbows. She has layers of freckles and a coat of blonde hair on her forearms thick enough to lick that Trixie loves. Trixie moves again, just her index finger to brush a line along the ridge of Katya’s forearm and it twists her up enough that she digs her hip into the bed and grunts softly. She knows Trixie catches it, giving her a small smile in return. 

  
“Since we don’t have that, maybe we could try something new? New for me, at least,” she says with a slight crackle in her voice.

  
Even though she never worries about her commitment now, Trixie suffers still that yes, Katya made love to other women over their lifetime apart. She couldn’t be celibate. It wasn’t a healthy option for her. She never spoke about them and she was always discreet. They’re undisturbed bats hanging in a closet in their home.

  
“What do you have in mind? Pervert?” It’s a little joke between them because while Katya is more overt on the regular, in the heat of the moment Trixie can get in over her head with ideas of what she wants. 

  
“I have thought about this before! It’s just I don’t know what to call it. Or I know, but I think you’ll laugh at the word.” Katya sits purposefully, studiously, pulling back from Trixie’s finger that’s giving her arm and upper body orgasms. She quickly straightens her glasses over her cheeks and runs her fingers through her hair to be sure it feels in place, serious-looking. Trixie appreciates the efforts made. “Okay. You know ...” she takes her hand that’s now free and tucks her fingers into her palm.

  
“What’s that?”  
  


“It—you know. You know?”

  
“I don’t know what you’re showing me, is there something in your hand?”

  
“Forget it.” Katya grabs her fist. “You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

  
“Never!” Katya insists with feigned indignation, her other hand splayed against her chest. “I made gestures and groomed myself but I said nothing about not laughing. And I’m not laughing.” She sits ramrod straight for another second before cracking, collapsing into the pillows in giggles. Trixie combs at the bottom of her own hair which has lost its style a little. She gently fingers and smooths until she returns the waves to something resembling their former glory. Her thick eye makeup is cracking. Katya turns to her back, onto her elbows. “Oh mama, please forgive me.”

  
“I know you want to,” Trixie replies, snapping her face to meet hers. The energy changes color. Or temperature. Taste, maybe. The conversation they were having before and the one Trixie just started are totally different. Katya clenches her legs together at the knees, up her thighs, and through her hips. “I’m not sure if I _can_ do it, I know it’s _hard_.” She has to know how hot this is making Katya. Trixie is a bimbo, it’s true, with some serious special skills. “But I’d like to try. You can show me?” It’s like every single thing she says, she’s saying it with her tongue between Katya’s legs. “Do you know how?”

  
Katya says nothing, then takes a sharp breath through her nose. “I do.” Trixie nods and says ‘yeah’ so quietly it aches. “Taught you everything, didn’t I?” Katya feels heat and wetness sizzle and pool and hears it coming out in her voice. Waiting for Trixie involved a lot of dreaming about sex with her in an abstract, soft lens way because, unlike fantasies with someone she would never have, Katya was pretty certain one day she would have Trixie. It didn’t feel right to think of her in gritty detail. She still did, sometimes. It just felt wrong. When their time came, that weird late afternoon wrapped in pool towels, it was incredibly sweet, and a little shocking at their age. But mostly so, so joyful to show Trixie what generally works, and show her how she likes things. When Katya showed herself to her to demonstrate where and how she could touch, Trixie face-planted into her like she was smashing into a frosted cake. It was and continues to be boundlessly magical to find new things Trixie likes.

  
“You waited so long for me, Katya.” Trixie pops the single button holding her lace cardigan around her shoulders, and Katya jumps a centimeter. She watches the lacy sheath drift away, leaving her one layer down but still fully covered. The power of saying her name out of nowhere is one of Trixie’s secrets.

  
“You did, too,” Katya remembers, reminds. “You had to wait for me. I know it hurt.”

Trixie’s painted butterfly wing eyes tremble and she tips her head. “I did. I waited. And I thought so hard ‘please, don’t let her fall for someone else.’ I didn’t pray because I don’t believe in that shit but I thought it in my head,” she tries to laugh. Katya smiles and pouts, gives her hand over for Trixie to grasp. Trixie does, rubbing her fingers and kissing them. “I couldn’t help it, I was scared and I wanted you so badly, honey.”

  
It was hard. It’s over now.

  
“I wasn’t available. I was taken. Obviously, you didn’t get that part until we really talked,” Katya says. She feels the squeeze from Trixie’s hand and darts her eyes to Trixie’s chest which she hugs with her other arm. She’s relaxed, though. They’ve gone over all of this before and they probably will again and again. “I was in love with you.”

  
“I was in love with you, too.”

  
“I knew,” Katya grins, leaning down and sucking her bottom lip. When Trixie pulls away she parts her mouth, inviting a full kiss, and Katya takes a breath from the air between them before touching her lips. She’s still obsessed with kissing Trixie intentionally every time, no matter how brief. When she’s done, she holds Trixie’s cheek, sticky under her thumb with melting foundation. She’s used to the mess of her face. Anything can become familiar. “And you were good. Very, very good. Kept your vows. Made huge sacrifices.” She makes wide eyes at her breasts and Trixie groans, reaches to the back of her head and unclips the bow. 

  
“I think it’s time for a costume change,” Trixie says, rubbing carefully at the corner of her eye to keep her nail away from her waterline. Katya springs off the bed and thumps to her feet, tosses the pack of makeup wipes to her. “Why don’t you do a little dance for me?”

  
“Ooh!” Katya exclaims. Trixie yawns, accidentally. “Hey—how about a vote of confidence?” Trixie gives her a whistle and Katya shimmies out of her soft waist pants. 

  
“Oh my God,” Trixie laughs. She winds down to a crawling sort of giggle and whine. “You’re so hot.”

  
She wasn’t sure she’d ever hear her say something so simple. Whenever Trixie says it, which she does a lot, the peaceful sleeping dove in Katya’s chest flutters.

  
“Too bad we missed each other’s glory days,” Katya laments. Then she braces her arms to show off muscles she doesn’t have, never really had, winces at her sore shoulder. “Shoulda seen me.”

  
Trixie balls up a third blackened wipe, pushes herself up to her palms on the bed. It’s clear to Katya she’s in trouble.

  
“You know, if you don’t feel attractive right now, say so. Don’t make me an accomplice when the rest of the time you’re telling me how sexy and beautiful I am,” Trixie says, waving her hand across her legs and scratching her lip. “Does that make sense?”

  
“Yes, dear,” Katya says in a mock defeated tone as she pulls her sweater and cooling camisole layers off with her sports bra. The bra’s purpose is to protect her nipples and nothing else. Her breasts drape soft and thin once it’s off. She rubs them at the sides where they itch with the relief of being free.

  
A taunting whine comes from the bed and Katya looks up.

  
“Let me do that.” Trixie’s mouth is in a devilish little smile. It tempts Katya to first require that she at least undress to match. She loves touching Trixie over and through her bra and underwear, the restriction of it, slipping fingers past the edges as though she’s not allowed, snapping the straps and elastics. She rubs her breasts more purposefully while looking at her, thinking of her. “Actually you go ahead. I’ll stay here and watch.” Trixie leans on her elbow with her hands folded. “Yeah, like that.” She’s learning some evil tricks with practice. All of it is for Katya. She wonders sometimes if Trixie actually thought it all out in advance, given how many years she had to do so, and is parceling out these treats for her to unravel like a crepe paper surprise ball.

“You hardly missed my ‘glory days,’ you fool. You stared constantly. Pretty sure you caught every angle with those crystal laser eyes and that nasty mind.”

  
Katya bites her lip and her cheeks itch. “I sure did.”

  
Trixie nods and shrugs. “Well, same.”

  
Katya hides her face in her hands, letting her breasts fall naked partially under her arms. She crawls back into bed. To her surprise, Trixie pushes her hip and slowly rolls on top of her which is an extraordinarily rare move. Rare enough to make Katya whimper and writhe. She ‘oofs’ pleasantly at the weight of her body and the cool satin she has to fist in each stiff, aching hand to scoot Trixie’s skirt higher. Settled comfortably, Trixie bends down and kisses her with her elbows bent around her shoulders. Katya finishes palming a pinup silhouette down her back and Trixie sinks her ass into her hands. Katya squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them, shaking her head and smiling.

  
“I don’t think you understand how obsessed I was with you. And yes, I craved conversation, the longer the better, but I was also just losing it daily over this,” she says, gripping and shaking the large risen dough in all ten fingers. Trixie laughs and inches down to kiss her body. It used to worry Katya that she’d be the type to feign decency, an affectation that gets old fast. But Trixie just laughs at the indecent, nearly all the time. And just like she used to every day, Katya still whines _she’s so wonderful_ in her head. She isn’t sure she wants to lose the habit.

  
Trixie looks up from one of Katya’s breasts that she has almost entirely in her mouth. “Remember the pool party?” she asks as soon as her spit disconnects between them. Of course, Katya remembers. It’s not something she wants to dig up so she stuffs Trixie’s mouth shut.   
  
  
The pool party was hosted by Principal Mattel about 15 years ago at his home. As soon as the invitations went out, months in advance to ensure everyone understood it was mandatory (to show off his fancy black bottom pool), Katya began to mentally prepare to see Trixie in a swimsuit. It was an occasion when they could sit together for a long stretch of time without some manufactured reason. Just talk and be near each other, more exposed than they’d ever been. Katya even worked out to impress her, for whatever it would be worth, and that was not something she made time for regularly. She never expected anything would _happen_. But she expected it to be an important day. Katya woke up that day on springs, bouncing and squeaking with excitement, and as soon as she arrived another teacher friend mentioned that Trixie was sick and wouldn’t be coming down.

  
Trixie’s curls tickle Katya’s shoulders and she brings her hands back up to scratch the itch. Trixie reaches to remove Katya’s glasses. Katya lets her rub her brows to loosen the tension.

  
“So pretty,” Trixie whispers and kisses Katya’s nose where her glasses sit nearly every waking minute. Unless they’re fucking. Having them taken off fires up Katya’s hips but she’s desperate to let this play out since it’s so unusual for Trixie to physically get on top. She’ll endure the delicious torture.

  
On their first anniversary, they took a second honeymoon to Key West and spent each day in swimsuits. It inspired Trixie to confess that she stayed away that day because she was scared. Scared to see and be near Katya, and the water, and absorb all of it, half-naked, and then find living that much harder. Katya told her she wore nothing scandalous, just board shorts and a racing top, same as she had on at the beach while Trixie revealed all this to her. It wasn’t about that. Trixie knew what to expect. She knew what Katya expected. And it would have been a wonderful day. They would have had a great time and no one would have thought anything of it. But Trixie decided to stay in her room and sleep through it. She slept through Katya being near and being more than she could want. More than she could handle wanting. 

  
“Fuck, mama, come on,” Katya keens and arches her back far from the mattress, “get undressed. You’re done up here.”  
Trixie sucks the bump on the bridge of her nose. “Mmhhmhmhm,” Katya giggles through closed lips.

“Just you hang on.” She slides off the bed and pulls the zipper on her dress, shrugs it off. As she pushes it down, she brushes over a magenta pink mesh garter that covers her belly and clips to her stockings with slippery, paler pink satin belts topped with plush bows and tiny pearls. Before Katya can react Trixie climbs back up and over her. The bottoms of the garter stretch and Katya reaches up to snap one of the belts.

  
“How long have you had these on?”

  
“I wrestled it on before you came up. Believe it or not, it’s tricky to clip these little suckers all the way around!” Trixie insists.

  
“I believe you! How does it feel?”

  
“Ha! I’m alive for the first time,” Trixie moans, fluffing under her hair, brushing the garter from back to front, and lifting and pulling at the tops of the stockings. She’s so proud of herself.

  
“You’re dead.” Katya grips and flips her and Trixie squeals, laughing. “You okay?” She’s fine. Sometimes Katya just forgets they have bones. She grabs at Trixie’s bra to pull it down and Trixie flinches sharply. She doesn’t even stop laughing but twists away protectively.

  
“Sorry,” Trixie breathes, trying to wave it off. “I just—“

  
“It’s okay, no rush.”

  
Ten years ago, Trixie had implants removed. Her body had rejected them, which is what naturally occurs, but it was so severe her chest started to crush them with tight, encapsulating scar tissue that all had to be carved out along with the implants themselves. She refused to replace them and the tissue healed the way they healed. She was no longer in worsening pain or obsessing over weirdly shaped globes of silicone hanging from her chest.

  
For Katya, Trixie’s big fake tits were lovely. She didn’t think it was sad that she wanted them, to Trixie’s surprise. Nor did she think of any risk involved. People get implants all the time, she isn’t a doctor.

  
But when they made Trixie sick, made her pained and distracted, and kept her from work, that all bothered her greatly. When she had to go under the knife again, Katya panicked. She wrote her a letter, like thousands of years of dykes both real and fictional before her had. She wrote many versions of the letter and stayed up late night after night, putting off lesson plans and test scoring but choosing her words for Trixie perfectly.

  
On Trixie’s last day, before she started medical leave, Katya swayed for ten minutes before the open grid of faculty mailboxes with a sealed envelope that offered everything she could give. It included an offer to resign from her twenty-five years at the school if Trixie took offense or wanted her to. When the fifth or tenth fellow teacher walked past her, and once the first bell was close to ringing, Katya used the edge of the envelope to push her glasses up her nose, tucked it into the slot and ran. She didn’t even double-check that she’d put it in the correct one, knowing if she looked back she’d make it vanish.

  
The bad thing was Trixie ended up with sort of wonky breasts, smaller than before, plus big, numb scars underneath them and around her nipples.

  
The good thing was she read Katya’s letter and found her in the parking lot at lunchtime, knocked on her passenger door and climbed in. Trixie didn’t kiss her. She did better. She said ‘Yes’ to all of it, the full package, enthusiastically. She wanted everything Katya could give her.

  
Katya caresses the shape of her sculpted bra and strokes the skin around it that’s less meaningful. Her thigh is snug between Trixie’s, feeling damp as Trixie squeezes down slowly while being touched.

  
“Did you ... was this thing about forgetting something and then suggesting something, then revealing this ensemble—“ Trixie silently interrupts her by tilting her head. She pulls her bra strap down, peers through her painted black lashes. Her expression wraps around Katya’s throat. She coughs once and mimes pulling around her imaginary collar to cool off. “Yeah,” she rasps like she’s taught three lessons back to back without a sip of water, “you planned it. You play so dirty.”

  
Trixie smiles and guides Katya’s hand where it was going before she stopped her, inside the cup of her bra. “I have the strap. I have everything. Want you to make love to me, and holding you inside me is my favorite. I think it will be special.”

  
“Fuckin’ hell. You’re the only one who could find a daisy-sniffing, Judy Bloom way of saying ‘shred me with your fist, you gym teacher-looking Suze Orman stunt double.’”

  
“Um,” Trixie says skeptically, grabbing the tufts at the front of Katya’s grey-blonde chop, “Suze has a hairstylist. Unless the stunt is your head on fire, you’re out that job.” Katya collapses into her, breathing hot laughter into her shoulder. “I am the only one who could. And you’re the only one who could say that and not ruin my mood. And I’d be honored if I’d bagged the gym teacher. But since you’re the science teacher, and a little softer,” she says with a deep grin, clutching at Katya’s not-muscled arm, “maybe your approach is a little more ... methodical ... technical.”

  
“So long as I’m nimble enough to hold your legs over my shoulders.” Trixie sadistically pinches the skin of Katya’s arm, a nasty little smile on her lips. Trixie is _gone_ , senseless. Katya easily slides a finger under Trixie’s grip, tuts her tongue and gives her a stern admonishing glare for the pinch. “You’re right. Might be mushier, but more precise with how to work you open.” She searches for a rim of warm brown left around Trixie’s widened pupils and finds them lit up like a lolling pair of solar eclipses. “Hm. Hm. I’m gonna need—“ Katya pauses and shuts her eyes, nods, and opens them again, wide. “A lot of lube. A lot.”

  
“Ahem,” Trixie replies, clearing her throat with flair. “I zipped it inside a wet bag, in case it exploded.”

  
“You know, ‘wet bag’ is really evocative—“ Trixie roughly kisses Katya to shut her up. They put every pillow to work, propping and cushioning what needs it. Trixie pulls her bra off before resting. Her scars are white and pink, thick and thin. The shapes above them are round and smooth, and her skin responds to Katya’s eyes and hands.

  
Before she gets the lube Trixie brought, Katya runs through the steps and what’s gotten the job done in the past. She also talks about not thinking of it as a singular, linear experience with one successful outcome. Trixie listens and thanks her for the helpful things she says, and leans back while she says some more. Her hair is dense behind her neck and she plays with it, turning it over her shoulders. Then she plants her dirty stocking foot on Katya’s soap-scrubbed bare chest, and as Katya continues to talk, Trixie slithers it up, the nylon catching on Katya’s sweaty skin. Katya bobs and weaves her face away from it, Trixie catches her and quiets Katya’s mouth with her toes. Her stocking smells like she’s been walking all day, and she has been. Katya allows her to crush her lips with her big toe and Trixie’s mouth splits open when she doesn’t move.

  
—

  
_Trixie keeps looking for her face across the room, and Katya keeps expecting a smile back because she’s used to it. All Trixie wants is to check she’s still there. Her hair is up, for once, and her face is done in pale makeup, ‘nude’ as it’s called. Katya feels like shit thinking how good she looks in black but she does. She looks beautiful and round, wholesome, dutiful._

  
_Today was not the memorial which will be a schoolwide affair. It was a small, intimate service for Trixie’s husband’s untimely death and a reception afterward that someone else catered from the grocery store._

_  
When everyone started to leave, Katya slipped away and sits now on a lounge chair next to the enclosed pool. It’s in an attached solarium and the pool is heated so even in the early winter the room is warm, damp, and filled with large, thick-leaved potted plants. Some are taller than she is. She’s been waiting here for a while, so she’s had time to walk around and examine them. She doesn’t know if Trixie took care of them or if he did. This is something she should know, she thinks. She’s going to have a lot to learn.  
_

_  
“Hi, Katya.” She addresses her as though they’re in the teachers' lounge and she’s passing by to use the Keurig. In rec_ ent _years, or at least until Principal Mattel was admitted with a pulmonary embolism two weeks ago, Trixie would address her with her fingernails on her shirt collar or the back of her neck. It depended on what they could get away with. That was the only thing they got away with, they didn’t attempt anything else, and each time it shocked Katya that she even would._

  
_“Can I do anything?” Katya asks while standing herself up, making the lounge chair slap against the tiled floor. “There were so many people helping, I didn’t want to get in the way, but please tell me if you want me to do something.”_

  
_“The house is empty.” Trixie’s face is dried out from tears and tissues. Katya nods. She knows it’s empty now. She also knows it will be empty once she leaves, and that it shouldn’t be. “Take care of me, like you’re my partner. And like I’ve lost a loved one. And it was a shock, I wasn’t ready, and I’m sick with guilt over how quickly he vanished and I never got a chance to explain anything to him. I want you to take care of me, and then I want you to comfort me.”_

  
_They’re supposed to wait until he retires and then she’ll divorce him. That’s just two years away. It isn’t, though, not anymore. The ‘is’ has to turn into ‘was’ or ‘would have been.’_

  
_“Have you tested the water?” Trixie asks, as though swimming in it was a plan they’d made. Katya swings her eyes to the pool._

  
_“Do you want to swim? It’s plenty warm, it’s like ... kind of gross actually it’s like bathwater.” She has dipped her hand in to rinse it after squashing it over the soil of one of the plants so she could smell it._

  
_“Should I turn it down?” Trixie wipes her nose with her tissue. It’s unclear if she’s irritated or sincerely asking._

  
_“No,” Katya answers, looking at Trixie’s hands past a rim of fog on glasses. Her nails aren’t done. She must have missed an appointment. It’s times like these when Katya wonders if she is obsessed in a way that excludes the possibility of a healthy relationship. If she’s ruined it in advance by being so deeply fixated, or if time has done that work and can be blamed. It’s still sunny outside but it’s a dark orange sun like something you might see right before being put under anesthesia, which turns out to be the operating room light._

  
_“I haven’t paid attention for the last week. The pool is his thing. I haven’t gone in as much as I would have—I hate that it has a black bottom. He chose it because it looks cool. I think it’s fucking scary, who knows what’s in there?”_

  
_Katya looks around the enclosed room._

  
_“What the fuck kind of critters do you have roaming the house? It’s not like a crab or a piranha to wander in from the woods and open the door, jump in and wait at the bottom for you.”_

  
_“Fine,” Trixie shrieks with a forced laugh, amplified in the room, “you go in and scan the bottom with your bare hands. Report back to me when you know there’s nothing there!”_

  
_“I would.” They both swivel their heads to look at each other at the same moment. “If you want, if it’ll make you happy today.”_

  
_“I told you what I want.” Her posture is weakened with grief. She’s strangely lucid, more than normal. “I want you.” Katya drops her head and scrunches her mouth. It’s impossible to hear that and not take advantage. “I’m ready.” Katya shakes her head and whispers ‘no’ to herself, not allowing it to penetrate. “No? I told you, I want it all. Even after I told you, you still asked if I meant all and I said, explicitly, all. Remember that?” At different times, Katya has had longer hair and she’d love a forest of it to grow over her now, strangle her. “You handed me a kind of ... love, support, and sex-optional contract, and I could take what I wanted and I said I want it all, and now I’m taking it. You even offered to disappear if I wanted you to, or to just support me for nothing in return—that’s so fucked up you thought I’d want that! Why are you like this?” Katya shrugs, speechless. Her throat is paralyzed. Trixie won’t say anything else until she does._

  
_“It’s taken me years to get like this, is all I know for sure.”_

  
_“Ha! Wouldn’t want to crowd your agony, honey,” Trixie says, putting her hands up. Katya marvels at her own ability to swoon for a term of endearment in a moment like this._

  
_“Mama ...” At some point, she started calling Trixie that, then started calling everyone that to cover. “I think it would be better to wait. And I can’t describe how much I don’t want to wait anymore, but if anything happened that you decide you regret later, I’d never recover.” Her eyes are red and watery, and disbelieving. “So are you just ... you’re just gonna go ahead and get naked in front of me? While I try to be noble?”_

  
_Trixie considers it and drops her unzipped dress to the floor._

  
_“Yeah,” Trixie smiles. “I’m temporarily insane, it’s grief, you know? I can do whatever I want.” Her flats—a travesty, her legs look hot as hell in heels—slide off and she starts to roll down the multi-layered shapewear skin that she probably wears every single day. Her real skin underneath is pale with spots all over and red marks from what she’s removed so far. Katya has dreamed about smelling and licking those red marks and all the others, laying raw once the lace and stitching are pulled back, aching to be scratched and rubbed away._  
_In her bra and underwear, Trixie steps in and sinks all that skin into the warm water. She pushes off with a splash and her body wiggles under the water from her movements and the small ripples all around her._

  
_“Come on. Don’t let me have this horrible idea all by myself. Also, you have work to do, I’m pretty sure there’s a dead rat in the corner there,” Trixie taunts dryly, squinting at the black bottom of the pool._

  
_“Um...” I’m not as hot as you, we’re not evenly matched, we’re not supposed to be seen together. I can’t see us together, not in the full light. I want the lights off so I don’t see me against you. “I don’t have a bra on,” Katya shrugs with her hands in her black jacket pockets. She has a black T-shirt underneath and black jeans. She hoped it would be sufficiently funereal. She didn’t dress entirely to entice._

  
_“I’m going to see them eventually. I’m okay with it being right now.”_

  
_“Oh, you’re okay with it?“_

  
_“Yeah.”_

  
_“That’s not committal enough. I want a full-bodied request,” Katya says, gesturing with one hand, the other still in her pocket on her cocked hip._

  
_“Show me your tits!” Trixie shouts through two cupped hands. The glass of the solarium mixed with the water creates a sharp echo. Katya stomps her foot and grabs the backs of her knees laughing into them. When she regains composure she looks behind her inside the main part of the house to be absolutely sure no one else remains._

  
_First, she takes her jacket off and folds it over the lounge chair. She takes her glasses off, tucks them into the inside pocket. Trixie rests her back at the opposite side of the pool, looking at all of her at once. After a few seconds, her knee pops up in the water. Katya pulls her T-shirt up. When she has it around her armpits and her breasts fall free, Trixie sinks her shoulders deeper. She’s felt desired before, but she isn’t sure she’s ever felt ogled this way. It makes her mouth twitch. Her belt gives her jeans some extra heft as they drape around her ankles. She swears Trixie blinks when they thump and click on the tile. Just for the tease of it, and because she needs to air it the fuck out, she runs her fingers around the waist of her briefs._  
_Katya takes the long way and walks to the steps instead of sliding down the side. Once she’s submerged in the water, it seems to take forever to wade through it to get to her. Trixie teases her, asks if she knows how to swim because she’s neither walking nor swimming but more lunging and paddling in excitement. Trixie doesn’t come closer. She waits with her arms floating beside her, and Katya hoops her arms around her shoulders, swings her legs around her waist. Trixie kisses her before she gets the chance. They press their lips together hard and don’t move them, breathe through their noses so they can stay that way until it hurts._

  
_When they finally break, Trixie marvels aloud at how it feels to hold her, swishes her easily with Katya’s ear pressed to hers. Wrapped in towels warmed by the steam in the room, they head into the house and up the stairs together leaving their dry clothes behind._

  
—

  
The tour buses depart at 9 am, meaning all teacher chaperones have to be at their buses with their lists at 8:45, after ensuring everyone has appeared for breakfast starting at 7:30. Subtracting two hours from that for the time it takes Trixie to get ready, they’ve been awake since about 5 am.

  
“Can I ask about the bow?” It sits on the dresser to be stuck in place after the rest of her hair is sealed. “Are you in a place where you can talk about it?”

  
“It’s so they can see me in any crowd, and to embarrass them. Honestly, they love grumbling about me so much, the least I can do is throw them a fresh bone every now and then.” Katya comes up behind her as she applies a curling iron to the front of her hair before she’ll spray and pin it all back. She puts her arms around her bound hips, already vacuum-sealed into their triple skins for the day. “It doesn’t bother me the way it would bother you.”

  
“I know it doesn’t. Still, wouldn’t mind slapping one of them around for you one of these days,” Katya grins into the mirror.  
  


“On our last day, I will give you a list of acceptable targets,” Trixie says around the hairpins she’s secured in her teeth. “Can you put this one back there? My hand is cramping.”

  
“I mean ... I can stick this in your hair and it will stay, I don’t think it will achieve what you want.”

  
“Fine. Go away, you’re making me sweaty.” Her grizzliness warms Katya.  
Katya plops on the end of the bed, legs spread. She pushes at Trixie’s butt with the ball of her foot and Trixie doesn’t react. It’s the kind of familiarity that makes her unsure this is all real, starting from so little to go on and ending up here. With everything. 

  
“I know it probably sounds nuts now but I’m glad I didn’t kiss you in the coatroom. I think it would have been a mistake,” Katya says. She’s looking at her own foot, stretching a cramp in the arch.

  
“Ha! I’m very glad, too, I would have been shocked. Can’t imagine it.”

  
Katya’s heart seizes.

  
“What do you mean? You know ...” She nudges Trixie. “Mama. We stood facing each other, panting and smiling.” Trixie looks part way back and shakes her head. “It was a moment. We were there, in it, together.”

  
With the bow in her hair, Trixie turns and leans her hands on the edge of the dresser. “I didn’t want to kiss you, I assure you.” Her eyes follow the collapse of Katya’s cheekbones and she dives forward and takes one, kisses the other as though she can rescue them. “Aw, honey. I didn’t know yet. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  
Everything started right there in that moment. If it had never happened, Katya doesn’t know what else would have never happened. Or what would have happened. That moment of possibility, believing that Trixie was there in it with her had sparked Katya’s confidence to pursue her across decades, often with little in return. It was twenty years before Katya collected the nerve to state her intentions clearly, hoping that Trixie felt more than just that little bit for her. Before then, it all hinged on thinking that one moment was real and ... it wasn’t. It never happened. Katya had lived on it anyway.

  
“All better?” Trixie holds the tissue for her.  
  


Katya laughs and rubs her nose, blinks her watery eyes. “Well it is only because I was a maniac and decided that was enough to like ... be in love with you my whole life.” Her voice wobbles worse and she wishes she had nails to dig into her palms to stop it. “And it worked out.”

  
“Not a maniac. It didn’t take long for me to catch up. I’ve always been a bimbo.” Katya cracks up and agrees, even though she didn’t mean it as much the first time. “I may not have wanted to kiss you but I remember us, together, and nothing else from that night. You outshined everything, even before I knew.”

  
It’s enough. She lets Trixie smother her for a minute, then takes the tissue back and dries her face with the dry spots left on it, tosses it onto the hotel’s bedside table with the pile from last night.

  
“I’m fine. I love you. I’ll see you at breakfast, wherever you’re sitting.” After putting on the wrong shoes for today, Katya walks out with them still on, hands in her fleece vest with her head down. She prays not to ride the elevator with any students. The hallway air is a lot fresher than their room air, a small relief.

  
**T: I have to confess somethjnf**

  
It’s clear she’s upset. She doesn’t send typos.

  
**T: you don’t snore  
**

**I wanted to see what happenes if I said you do. By the time you were like, booked into a sleep clinic I couldn’t say anuything.**

  
Soon after they moved into a small new home together, Trixie informed Katya that she snores. Katya was perplexed, said she’d never known herself to snore before. Trixie said casual dates and whatnot wouldn’t have told her. Katya started with items from the drugstore to stop snoring, and as Trixie said each one didn’t work, in hopes that she would give it up, Katya instead became more emboldened. She finally did a sleep study and they concluded that she was fine, no apnea, and no apparent snoring. Finally, she threw her hands up and said she didn’t know what else to do, and Trixie agreed it was far past time to let it go.

  
K: Why?

  
T: He did snore and I told him and he looked at me, said “I don’t” and that was it. I knew right then.  
  
With you I thought it would be funny and I wanted to know you take me seriously and care about my feelings, I  
  
Never expected you to go so far to do it

  
K: Because before that yoh didn’t know me at all???

  
She isn’t angry. She’s waiting eagerly for Trixie to appear in the hotel’s group dining room set up with a buffet, sweating bullets next to a boiling hot tray of scrambled eggs kept warm over canned heat. The table at the end was suspiciously empty, she should have known when she sat near it that it was for fucking piping hot troughs full of lava eggs.

  
Katya did this wait many, many times before they got together. When will she come through that door, is she sick today, did she see my message, is she not up for one of our dinners where we pretend we don’t have hearts and genitals for the sake of spending a little time together, put off cry-fucking into each other’s hair a little longer?

  
Her hands are sore, both of them.

  
Texting is straining the same muscles in her right hand and wrist that she used last night. Trixie kept asking her to force it, as though Katya could. Trixie lay bare with her hair loose behind her sweaty neck, soaking her concentration and work through the pillows. They took a break to drink water and breathe easy, came back to enjoy each other in more everyday relaxed ways, then tried once more. It was worth the wait and the effort. They agreed passionately on that.

  
The first time they slept together, Trixie cried and said she wanted to be young together. She cried for the waste.

  
Katya looks up from her hands and sees Trixie seated in a tiny, dreary reception room chair in her group’s section of the dining room. Knowing the depths and strain she would endure—she _begged_ to endure—and seeing her among the creatures who revile her with little glowing pokers in their hands, Katya doesn’t think but climbs over the banquet table in front of her. The raucous chatter of the room mutes in an instant. Trixie stands, concerned, and another faculty member turns to look with cold toast in his mouth and knocks over the whole tray of hot pancakes. The tin of canned heat catches on the tablecloth and shoots up a curly whip of purple-orange flame.  
With the attention turned away from them, Katya hugs her and kisses her, makes Trixie dip gracelessly and kisses her again and again.

  
—

  
The buses get rearranged to push their groups together. They sit in the back row with bowed heads, Trixie’s legs in Katya’s lap. Every time a student turns halfway back to gape in horror, another one punches or throws things at them so they don’t all get suspended or worse. Mrs. Mattel can pull any punishment she wants. She’s a legend.

  
Neither of them takes notice. Trixie strokes the fingers of Katya’s right hand.

  
“I think I’m over it. Finally,” Katya says. She watches Trixie pull her hand through both of hers over and over like she’s fascinated by what it can do. “You deserve me to be.” Trixie sighs big. She looks up, takes Katya’s glasses and puts them on. It’s their shorthand for ‘move on’. They look cute on her. “You earned it.” Trixie makes an awkward smile that turns triumphant, just for Katya.


End file.
